Friday, October 15, 2010

Book: Super Science Concoctions

I picked up this book at the library one day, at random, to see what it had to offer. I have to admit that I was quite impressed with the collection. Several activities were familiar to me, but there were a lot of new ones. And I like the way in which the familiar ones were presented.

If you include all the follow-up activities, there are well more than 50 things to do in this book. In addition, it's really about more than mixtures (that part of the title had lowered my expectations). It's largely about liquids, covering topics of solutions, phase changes, chemical changes, density, viscosity, surfact tension, polymers, etc.

Each activity includes a section, "The Principle of the Thing", which does a really nice job of explaining the science behind the experiment in kid-friendly terms.